Gimmie a hm and I'll render you a gorgeous texture map. My new hexcore loves chewing through renders in carrara (or maybe I just like seeing the 6 little rendering boxes powering through the canvas =D ).

Yeah carrara scales so well :D
The only reason I didnt already render one for this is that variation is a good thing.

I'm sorry its taking me so long. where I had about 10+ hours a week to work on this its been cut down to about 1-2 hours.

I've successfully imported the object positions into blender(was ridiculously simple, and export should also be as simple) I would like to work on the script some more to make it more user friendly( like using a file selector, but that would take far too much time). a problem I'm having is placing the objects onto the ground plane en mass. also how I will have them dynamicall update as I sculpt the terrain underneath them

I've updated the grass texture so it doesn't tile so obviously.

what's left
* update replace trees and rocks
* updating diffuse map to be reflect the object positions
* make clear the vehicle passable areas on the texture
* detail distribution and detail maps.
* figure out the normal map stuff(behe said to look into altair crossing v2)
* grass
* clean up height map(might get some help for that)
* fix metal map.
* mapinfo.lua tweaking

And a lot of this stuff is really easy and simple.. I've been tackling the harder jobs first. By far the hardest thing is the sheer amount of detail I want to put into the textures.

Don't worry about it man, everybody here works in the time that they have and are willing to spend on it, if you get ANY work done at all that is better than a lot of us (I have been sitting on map designs for months now, i have the texture and everything done but i cba to move an inch more on it).

Perhaps you can ask someone to help like I have. Move it forward a little.

I have something lined up for after this map perhaps we can work on them once I'm done with that. Or it can all be done together.. will ask you about it later on. :)

Another thing you could do about noticeable tiling on the grass is to run it through some filters in either gimp or Photoshop. Here's a pretty good article on it http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3073/the_power_of_the_high_pass_filter.php

Yeah I know about he high/low pass filters thing.. I use a gimp plugin called resynthasize that does a good job of tiling.

and I've moved development to dropbox because there is no native gdrive client atm
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7kmlwobegvwfbwo/cIqyA2A7wk

I've fixed the grass tiling issue now by just using a noise procedural, it needs variation that I'm working on now using the object positions of the features.

Here's a render done in blender for now.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ybdt290cqnus3vl/example.png

I'm using ad0_pine_1_m, 2 and 3 for the trees, the rocks I may replace completely as their mesh is really ugly. but they serve for now.

I've also created a quick and dirty metal spot texture to use, I will clean up the alpha and create a couple more for variation.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uumj4qswec5y2jy/metalspot.png

I attempted a geovent texture but it was horrible, so will have to come up with something cool.

Its coming along slowly

quite unrelated:
i was just thinking, how would metal spots look like, fo real?
if the ground was stony, then it could be shown with some red mixed in (for iron). if the ground is grassy/earthy, and there would be a crack or the like, that shows some earth, then it could be red earth too there.
if it is grassy/earthy wihtout a crack (as too many cracks, wherever there are metal spots, would be unrealistic), there might be different plants in that spot, due to more iron in the ground?
and maybe spots on stony ground could yield more/less then those on soft ground, cause it is harder to drill and extract, or cause the concentrations are different.
of course it would still not be really realistic, as metal is not placed in spots, but in areas, and even if it was, it would probably not affect the types of plants that grow there too much. i guess it would also be more painfull for the mapper, and more work to change the metal layout later on. it would make for a different look though.

I think any attempt at making metal resource spots to look realistic will fail. On the other hand, geothermal vents should be much easier as they can be localised in a smaller area. I've been looking around at different images of geothermal stuff, there aren't many images, but I know for sure that the surrounding terrain will have different vegetation, perhaps some boiling mud or cracks in the ground etc..

Only if you want them realistic and naturalistic at the same time.

Otherwise, just dig a hole and add tubes and assorted other trash sticking out in form of a non-blocking non-reclaimable feature.

Then it's either a trash deposit, or an old ore mine which you only fix and reactivate by building an extractor on top. But that's explicitly industrial-themed, i guess, so doesn't fit everywhere.

Not fo real, but gameplay wise it is imo bad that you can build on metalspots. I think there is no other rts where you can accidently make the resources unusable by building a factory on top.
Imo that is very bad game design, same for geo vents.
Starcrafts vespine geysir solve it better.

I don't see it as any kind of issue, once you know how it works there's no problem. Also it allows, for example, for metalmaps.


As for Starcraft - manner pylons or equivalent can make resources unusable/less efficient, probably even by accident for a first timer.

Is there anyone that can provide me with a commander .obj mesh that I can use for reference while in blender?

would be most appreciated..

another blender render, still working on the feature variation on the terrain diffuse map, will probably seperate out rocks and trees to have slightly different effect :D

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2clrxlsgogizt14/example2.png

Can you not export the s3o from upspring or use beheriths convertor?

I was looking at the commander from BA and its an 3do file. or I would have just exported it myself.

I don't have upspring either. is there a linux version?

Ah of course. Well, Upspring could convert it but it's never really worked under linux. Attach the 3do and I'll convert it.